


Feathers

by Sonora



Series: Heads in Boxes [6]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Retrospective, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ressler adds a tattoo to his collection.  Reddington wants to talk to him about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> So... yeah, Ressler wanted another tattoo. He just wanted it.

“Donald, there you are! I have been calling and calling and here I find you, positively ruining yourself for the morning’s little soiree. Did you forget about the breakfast engagement we have with the Italian ambassador?”

“I’m sure the ambassador will understand. Only time I could get an appointment.” 

“Donald...”

But his Donny just holds up his left hand, the tattooist immediately letting go, sliding back on that little rolling stool he’s perched on, silent. It doesn’t escape Reddington, the way the man’s eye flick to his missing arm, the way his jacket sleeve is handing loose and empty. To his credit, he doesn’t utter a damn word about it. 

The story was going to get out sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any, Reddington supposes.

Least of his concerns.

Having to track Donald down at this hour, however...

“It’d look a bit weird if we didn’t finish it now, don’t you think?”

Reddington runs his fingers around the brim of his hat, buying himself a precious few seconds to pull his thoughts together. He hates being on the ground here; in all the cities of all the world, this is the one, the only one, Reddington doesn’t feel safe in. Not anymore. The plan was to get in, talk to Lizzy, and get out. Visiting a tattoo parlor, the same tattoo parlor, where Don had his original work done was not part of that. Especially when Don disappeared out of their bed, at a very nice hotel in Virginia, in the middle of the night to get it done.

He knows he shouldn’t have listened to his doctor and stopped for the night. His arm’s healed up just fine from the surgery. He doesn’t need the rest.

Being disobeyed, having one pulled over on him... it’s irritating. And it makes him feel old.

“Victor, you do exceptional work, and I as ever in awe of your skills. Would you mind terribly giving young Donald here a few minute break from the needle? Those vibrations can be a bitch.”

The tattooist - a quiet, pudgy man whose entire demeanor smacks of mid-life crisis career change - just nods. “Sure thing, Mister Reddington,” he agrees easily, and swings up off the stool. “Can I get you boys anything? Coffee, some water, beer’s in the fridge...”

“Ten minutes,” Reddington interrupts, and nods at the door.

Maybe he’s a little too brusque.

But then, maybe Donald shouldn’t be getting a full sleeve done at three AM.

Reddington waits until Victor leaves.

“You disobeyed me, Donald,” he says shortly, sitting down on the stool, pulling himself close to the chair where his boy is stretched out. “What the hell are you thinking?”

Donald just snorts, and reaches over to the table where the ink’s laid out, retrieving a can of what looks like cheap beer. “How am I disobeying you? You didn’t tell me I couldn’t get another tattoo.”

Reddington stares at him. “I told you my timetable for this visit...”

“And I talked to Victor ahead of time, made sure he could get the design I sent him done within that time,” Donald replies easily. His eyes are a little glazed. Probably the endorphins. Those black forms twine up his arm, clear up to his elbow. Fast, clean, good work. “I wasn’t going to blow anything.”

“Donald, if we’re going to work together...”

Donald laughs and sips at his beer, waving Reddington down. “We’re not working together, Raymond. I’m not that stupid.”

“We’re not?”

“I’m working for you. I’m your boy now.” He pauses, hand up in front of his face. The skin’s red, bleeding just a little around the youngest of the ink. “Luzhin called me a bitch.”

“That’s rich, coming from an FSB mole.”

“He was talking about the feathers on my back. The bird.”

And Reddington does raise an eyebrow at that. “He saw you naked.”

“I might have fucked his boy a few times.” Donald takes another drink. “I think that was Luzhin’s way in. Kirill wanted him bad. He had to have known. ’S probably been using it against him this entire time.” He stops. “Kirill needed it so bad, and Luzhin used it to get what he wanted.” 

It’s a question, and a statement, and an accusation. It’d be impossible to miss; Donald might not be a fed anymore, but he always was good at those semi-legal interrogation methods the task force employed. It keeps things interesting. Most of the time.

This one though? “You know, Victor was an accountant, before he dropped everything, divorced his wife, and moved to New York to pursue his dream as a tattoo artist...”

“Victor used to be in sales,” Don snaps, sitting up and forward now. He’s in a tank top, one of those white ribbed things, sweat from five hours in the chair making it translucent. He looks good. And Reddington has to admit, so does the tattoo. “Cut the bullshit, Red. What’s your problem?”

“You snuck out on me.”

“Yeah.”

“That kind of ink, that visible, it’s stupid. It makes you that much more identifiable. Once word gets out...”

“Luzhin saw me naked. He knows I work for you. That’ll get around, no matter how much you threaten the man, cause Kirill knows it too.”

“It’s your _hand_ , Donald.”

“No shit, Raymond.”

“Visible tattoos are dangerous.” 

“I think my mug shot from booking at Scotland Yard is a bit more recognizable.”

And Reddington sits back on the stool, hand on his hip. “You know, you were a lot more fun when you were still working for the FBI. You listened to me.”

Donald just shrugs, and goes back to his beer. “I had to let you fuck with me, is what you mean. You enjoyed it.”

“I did.” Looking at the design again, Reddington can’t help but feel... something. Feathers. Don’s getting feathers down his arm, his left arm. Because of the bird on his back. The bird Reddington put there himself. 

And Donald’s just staring at the wall.

“You know what the worst thing about leaving the FBI was?” he asks, slow.

Reddington nods - he knows that pain, knows it all too well. “The loss of purpose.”

It earns him a surprised look. “You...”

“Walking away from the Navy was hardly my choice, Donald,” Reddington says quietly and, spotting a minifridge in the corner, gets up, gets himself one of those beers. Truly awful, he decides at first sip, but it’s 0300 and he’s not in the mood to care. If Donald wants to talk, fine by him. Just means he doesn’t have to.

“Back in high school, I wanted to do something with my life. Something important. Help people, stop people like you.” Donald’s right index finger is picking at the tab on top of his can. “I had all these grand ideas about where I would go and what I would do.”

Nodding, Reddington settled back down on the stool. “We all have dreams like that when we’re young and stupid.”

“So what, we get old and jaded and just go to sleep?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

Donald sighs. “I jumped a ship in New York City, took it... doesn’t matter, really. I was trying to get out, get as far from you and the fucking Post Office as I could, but after a while, realized I wasn’t running from anything. I wasn’t important enough to come after.” Don looks at him. “You didn’t come after me.”

It’s terrible beer. Fits the setting somehow, though, so Reddington keeps drinking it. “I didn’t know you were gone. Nobody told me.”

“You didn’t notice,” Donald counters. His shoulders slump. “The worst thing in the world, realizing you committed yourself to a path that has no use for you. I thought... but it wouldn’t have meant a damn thing to anybody had I gotten killed on an op.”

“A cog in the machine, easily discarded, easily replaced,” Reddington agrees firmly and sets the cold can aside, laying his hand instead on Don’s knee, fingers trailing up to the edge of that fresh tattoo. 

This is not the first time they’ve talked about this, but it does need to be the last. Don needs to get his head out of his ass, get past this, even if it’s something nobody ever really gets past. Needs to make new dreams for himself. Isn’t that why he came, agreed to stay? Because he wanted to know how make something new for himself?

“But if this is some kind of signal about belonging to me... I’m not a cause, or a reason, or anything you need to be committing yourself to.”

“You committed me, the moment I walked into that bar in Munich and you introduced me as your mole in the State Department,” Donald replies. 

“You made your own...”

“I’m not mad. I’m just saying, it’s a weird thing to spend your whole life preparing for something, to be something, and lose it. Over nothing. To nothing. For no... goddamn reason at all.”

Reddington breathes out, trying to think of what to say. There’s the obvious answer, the story of his own ousting, how he found himself a criminal, what he did about it. But he’s not ready to tell Donald that - not now, not yet, not here. 

“Derek Hanson,” he says, snapping his fingers happily. “That was his name. Derek Hanson. Classmate of mine at Annapolis. We had Comparative Politics together, fucked a few of the same local girls, drank together, good buddy. He came from an old Navy family, father and grandfather and hell, probably going back to when Jefferson put the Navy together to fight the barbary pirates, but that’s a different story.”

Donald eyes him warily. “Red, if this is more of your bullshit...”

“No, this is applicable. See, me, I went to Annapolis on a whim, more or less. Just seemed like a good idea, my junior year of high school. But Derek, Derek, he wanted to be a SEAL. Decided it back when he was six. He’d spent his whole life working towards that goal. Trained harder than anyone I knew, maxed PT testing every semester, made stupid high grades. He was the only person I knew who actually got a B in Chemistry.”

“A B?”

“At Annapolis, you’re lucky if you make a 2.5 GPA. But stop interrupting. Derek was headed right to the top. We all knew it. And he got sent to SEAL selection training right out of school. Graduated in May, started selection in October. You know what happened to him?”

“I know you want me to ask...”

“He stepped in a hole during one of those team exercises where they make you transport an oil drum full of concrete ten miles, or some such nonsense. He was at the front of the contraption they’d rigged to carry the damn thing and in went his left leg. Right up to the knee. Snapped in three places. Guess what happened to him?”

“What am I supposed to get from that?”

“He couldn’t handle it. Killed himself two years later. I think he was working as a manager at a bank. Doesn’t really matter. Some of us went to his funeral, and I remember sitting in the pew thinking to myself, what a pussy he was. But I look at it now, older, wiser, less hoo-ah, and it’s clear to me why he did it. It’s a heartbreak that’s indescribable, that nobody understands or wants to understand, least of all those who happily take advantage of the sacrifices you’ve made.”

Donald is staring at him, eyes red, and Reddington doesn’t embarrass him by wiping that tear away from his cheek.

“I’m not a replacement for that, Donald. I can’t be. I won’t be.”

“I...” Donald’s voice cracks, and he stops for a moment, wipes his face, and smiles a little. “I just don’t want to have to take my shirt off to prove I am who I say I am.”

“You aren’t putting this here for the rest of the world, are you?” Reddington asks, realizing. “It’s for me. It’s a reminder for me. So I don’t forget.”

“Not everything’s about you, Red,” Don replies and it sounds almost light. “But of the two of us, I am the one who’s got a left hand now, aren’t I?”

Reddington can’t help but laugh. “Aram told me they’re calling you the Albatross now. Quite a feat, getting an international moniker in your first year of operation. Took me almost ten to get mine.”

“Almost good enough to be on the Blacklist, eh?”

“Keep dreaming, Donny.”

And that smile, that smile is real.

It’s a nice smile. Reddington’s missed that smile.

Victor comes back in. Fires the tattoo machine back up.

He finishes by six.

They’re in the air by eight, Don’s bare left arm shiny with Aquaphor, three feathers curling up clear to his knuckles, bracing him up against the fuselage wall, riding Reddington’s cock.

“You know, this makes you my bitch, all these feathers,” Reddington pants.

“Shut up and fuck me,” Donald laughs, and kisses him hard enough to draw blood.


End file.
